Books & Poetry

But the anarchist bookfair isn’t just about books. There are T-shirts and the badges, discussions, workshops, films, exhibitions, and a rolling ‘drop-in’ anarchist cabaret hosted by comedian Tony Allen. It’s also a child-friendly social networking event, and a chance to show off this year’s newborn anarcho-babies. Meetings this year include Campaign for Real Anarchy – an attempt to get anarchist struggles back out on the streets after some ‘quiet’ years. The bookfair has traditionally witnessed the first planning meetings for the next year’s Mayday, although in our globalised twenty-first-century world, next summer’s G8 meeting (in Heiligendamm, Germany) will assume that symbolic status. Feature continues

The fair has a rich history of its own. In the distant past, there were problems with neo-Nazis turning up. Last year, the collective put a stop to an impromptu meeting of 9/11 conspiracy theorists, among them Anne Machon, David Shayler’s partner and former boss at MI5, who while there had been responsible for surveillance of anarchist groups. Then there was the 2003 bomb scare, in which police cleared bookfair punters out of the Camden Centre, only to find two suspect packages containing lumps of metal wrapped in cryptic notes. Suspicion fell on situationist pranksters seeking to make the fair more exciting.

As a result of what Wood describes as ‘weird and wonderful claims about dodgy organisations funding us, or us being huge capitalists’, the bookfair is possibly the only one in existence to print an annual breakdown of its finances on the back of its programmes. (The money comes from hire of stalls and bucket-shaking on the day.) Past publicity strategies have included stickers on lampposts, and spray painting walls and billboards.

‘Our role is to facilitate, not to mould,’ says Molloy of bookfair policy on meetings, although Wood adds that ‘groups that believe in standing for parliament’ are less welcome. In an environment where police infiltration is a constant fear, there’s also a longstanding ban on photography inside the fair. For the past 15 years, tiny Trotskyite groups like the Socialist Party of Britain – too marginal even for the anarchist bookfair – have always arrived to set up stalls on the steps outside. ‘It’s things like that make the bookfair what it is,’ says Wood.

25th London Anarchist Bookfair, London Voluntary Sector Resource Centre, 356 Holloway Rd, N7. Holloway Road tube. Sat, October 21, 10am-6pm, entry by donation. www.anarchistbookfair.org